growing a new blog from a cutting

…metaphorically speaking. I'm bringing an old, idle blog out of retirement. That blog started out as the blog and primary website for iCreate, a Mountairiair NM service organization focusing on community gardening and music/arts education.

On leaving the organization, I turned the Facebook page over to someone else and kept the blog because a) I so liked the design, and b) one else in the organization ever helped with the blog or knew anything about blogging. Not that anyone ever helped with the Facebook page but those are designed with an even lower bar for tech competence than even the simplest of blogs. Eventually -- and quite logically, the local arts council absorbed iCreate. The Facebook page, ICreate NM, remains, mostly music now. All or most of the primary agents are active members of the arts council, and a number of arts council members are active in iCreate.

An ultimate fall #gardening to-do list

Fall isn't just for harvests, you can still get some mileage out of your garden… ...in pictures from @Pinterest

Fall isn't just for harvests, you can still get some mileage out of your garden before it's time for cool-season crops. Keep your green thumb going with these tips. From Kalyn Allen Fall Vegetable Gardening for Beginners From Lavende and Lemonade 18 Vegetables for Your Autumn Garden - ... Expand your garden with 18 common vegetables well-su... From Survival for Blondes 8 Lightning-Fast Vegetables For Your Fall Garden | #... From Sherry Clark Vegetables to Grow In the Fall Vegetabl... Do you think your gardening is over when Fall arrive... From Ann Walterman Bloom time charts for fall-planted bulbs, spring-pla... From Michelle Raphael What To Plant for Fall Gardens - The Ga... There are many vegetables that you can plant now for... From Charlotte Pastorius Freund... Renee's Articles: What to plant in June What to plant in June (late summer crops) & July, Au... From Rachell McCreary Top Fall Flowers for Your Garden Looking for a hardy daisy? Helenium is a beautfiul f... From Larecia Springer 5 Step Guide to Growing Gorgeous Garlic... All you need to know for growing your own garlic, an... From Ginny Hartman How to Grow Pumpkins - Decor Adventures Tips for growing pumpkins (for the pumpkin patch I w... See more Pins

Everybody Eats: How Gardening Can Feed the Soul

In The Backyard Parables (Grand Central Publishing, 2013), author Margaret Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her. In short, she learned how the garden feeds the soul. Roach has harvested thirty years’ worth of backyard parables—deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper—and has distilled them all in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, and at-home pickling. 

The following excerpt is an introduction highlighting her early gardening experiences and the road to finding spirituality in nature.

Bountiful Gardens e-newsletter

…gets you ready for winter gardening. HT Yvonne Savio, Common Ground Garden Program, University of California Cooperative Extension, 

A special short newsletter on winter crops

Timing is one of the garden skills that takes a lot of experience. Customers tell us that they like hearing when it is planting time for each gardening season.  So--we saved the tips on winter crops until now, when planting time is coming around.  

Everything we mention in this newsletter can be planted from now for at least a month. In mild-winter areas, you can plant much longer. 

Some of these crops grow food for you, like garlic and wheat, others grow fertilizer for your soil, and (best of all), both kinds of winter crops help keep weeds out of your garden!  

Sept20 Walking Field Trip

9am-2pm Thursday to art & gardening locations in  #Mountainair. Walking Field Trip

Time to get growing...

#Mountainair Community Garden manager Joan Embree writes,

Gardeners and friends,
     

With May 15 passed, those who have adopted plots at the community garden can (probably) safely plant veggies, flowers, whatever... starting now.  A few brave souls have already put in some starts.
     

We work every Saturday from 10 am to about noon, and whenever else the mood strikes us. The keys to the work sheds -- tools, seeds, etc.-- are hidden out back of the sheds for access. (Just ask if you need to know where. Send my your email address too ~ it's always a pleasure to add new gardeners to our list)

Soil Presentations, Santa Fe April 13-15

Presentations by Soil Expert Elaine Ingham Cosponsored by SF Farmers' Market Institute April 13-15, very welcome in the continuing absence of iCreate updates. Next, perhaps another video, the Off-Center Arts calendar or something musical.... but not indefinitely.

Trouble viewing? Click here

The Santa Fe Farmers' Market Institute is cosponsoring the first session of this year’s Carbon Economy Series, featuring Dr. Elaine Ingham, Chief Scientist for the Rodale Institute and world-renowned expert on soil biology, next weekend April 13–15 at Santa Fe Community College. In exchange for our sponsorship, all vendors of the Santa Fe Farmers Market who are interested will be attending the entire workshop for free. Over 40 farmers have signed up already!

All the events listed below are also open to the public. The day long workshops are $175 per day, or $300 for the entire weekend, but the Friday night introductory presentation is only $10 and provides an overview of Dr. Ingham’s cutting edge work in healthy soil management. Below are all the details:

 

Rodale Institute

Living Soil is Where It’s At

Dr Elaine Ingham, Rodale Institute, discusses healthy soil biology, fertility and high production yield.

prune a peck of unpickled peppers

A video for "Grow Your Own" #Mountainair gardeners & growers whether home kitchen garden, community garden or growing for the local farmers market.

When do you prune your pepper plants?
How do you prune your pepper plants?
Where do you prune your pepper plants?
WHY do you prune your pepper plants?

The answers are simple! The procedure is SO EZ and SO darned effective! Your pepper plants will grow thick, strong and produce heavier yields this season.

Also included in this episode is a special mention to those who sent seeds. Look at how well they're growing.

All kinds of good info! Tune in and let's have some fun. :)
tomato contest: http://youtu.be/y1MX5MahmKM

Yeah for Gardening!

British town grows all of its own vegetables, witnesses improved civic life and reduced crime as a result

 

Todmorden Harvest Festival 

Ethan A. Huff
Natural News

When the small British mill town of Todmorden, tucked in between Yorkshire and Lancashire, first began installing fruit and vegetable gardens all around the area as part of the Incredible Edible program, it likely had no idea that the novel, yet simple, concept would make the town a foremost inspirational and self-sustaining model of the future.

Fresh herbs, succulent greens, and tasty fruits can be found growing near civic buildings, college campuses, supermarket parking lots, and various other places. Small garden plots, raised planting beds, and even small soil strips in these areas can be found brimming with fresh produce, all of which are free to anyone who want it, and at any time.

The #gardening Daily, Monday, Oct. 31, 2011

In this issue, Dirt Lovers Diary and Manure Tea articles look particularly interesting ~ or maybe that is just my taste for unusual titles. Seriously though, the first (DLD) links to an article, "Wintering Plants for Next Season," relevant to current gardening concerns. 

Do you have tips for wintering plants in the New Mexico high desert or know a local gardening wizard experienced with local gardening conditions? Please share them with us. Besides blogging them, iCreate could assemble a collection local gardening lore to publish on line and make available to all. 

Autumn Gardening

Praxxus55712 just uploaded a video: EZ Autumn Composting with Leaves! Autumn isn't the end of gardening season. The gardening adventure never end and never ceases to be FREE, educational and just plain FUN! Join me in the backyard for a fantastic day in the sunshine. I have a bag of leaves and a very cool idea on how to easily improve your garden soil. Leaf compost attracts worms like a super magnet. Worms in your garden will mean crazy good soil for your next growing season.  ps: How is your autumn going so far? Are the leaves turning or have they already fallen? More

KGI News: a global community cultivating change

High school teacher Adam Guerrero of Memphis, TN has been cited for his front yard kitchen garden. Please help send a message to local officials there that Adam and his garden are not the problem, but part of the solution.

Act Now  Follow On Twitter Join Us On Facebook

Earthworms, bees, eggplants, oh my! If it seems like just last month that a kitchen gardener was facing legal woes for planting a subversive plot in a front yard, it wasn't: it was two months ago!  Last time around, it was a mother of four from Michigan who was facing a possible 93 day jail sentence for her tidy raised bed garden. This time it's Adam Guerrero, a high school math teacher from Memphis, Tennessee, who's feeding himself from his front yard, keeping bees and worm composting bins in his back yard and using it all to teach teenagers in his community about healthy eating and living.  Read his story and show your solidarity here»

How-To gardening video in English and Spanish

from the Common Ground Community Garden list, 

Master Gardener Millie Macen-Moore has produced some wonderful How-To gardening videos for beginning gardeners in English and Spanish from the Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Los Angeles community of Highland Park .

Milli Macen-Moore, a sustainable landscape expert, pours seeds for planting 

during "Organic Sundays," at Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Highland Park, 

Email directly from the site to join mailing list.

April 5: Gardening Workshop

Tuesday's Claunch-Pinto sponsored Gardening Workshop in the Mountainair High School Library, 901 West 3rd St, will cover "Vegetable Gardening" ~ x-posted to Announcements, Mountainair Farm & Garden Market and iCreate: please excuse any duplications in your mailbox or feed reader

The presentation by Gene Winn, County Extension Agent-Agriculture, NMSU-Torrance County Extension Office starts at 6pm. 

The Library is located at the back of the school, at the north - just follow "Gardening Workshop" signs from the parking lot. If the gate on 3rd St is locked, you may need to enter the parking lot from the alley next to the high school.

Submitted by Carla Cope, Claunch-Pinto SWCD, P.O. Box 129, Mountainair, NM 87036, 505-847-2941

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Ed. Note and FYI ~

Check home vegetable gardening in NM and other Extension gardening information pages.  Did you know that NMSU College of  Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Services (CACES) has a YouTube Channel with 419 videos, 200 in the Southwest Yard and Gardening section alone? Better than a good Aggie joke but on't expect all of them to be about organic gardening. To find more gardening resources on YourTube, use the handy search bar at the top of the page.

Get More Veggies from Your Garden

Photo Credit: j-oh, Flickr Creative Commons.

In the quest to grow more of our own food on our 1/4 acre city lot, we've spent a bit of time bemoaning the fact that we are quickly running out of space. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to make your limited garden space work harder for you.

The latest issue of Mother Earth News features a great article by Barbara Pleasant, "40 Gardening Tips to Maximize Your Harvest." The entire article is online, and it's definitely worth reading. The section that particularly caught my eye, however, was the section on tips for using space efficiently. Here are some of the tips that have worked well for me.

Tips for Using Garden Space Efficiently

1. Interplant Compatible Crops

This can be as simple as sowing some mesclun when you plant your tomato transplants. By the time the tomato plants are filling the space, you'll have gotten several mesclun harvests from the bed already. You could also plant herbs, such as basil and oregano, near your tomatoes, and make better use of your space while gaining some of the benefits of
companion planting; basil planted near tomatoes is said to improve the flavor of the tomatoes.

2. Succession Plant for Continual Harvests

Certain vegetables, such as lettuce, carrots, corn, radishes, and peas, mature fairly quickly. If you sow a new row or pot of these veggies every week or two, you'll ensure a regular harvest throughout the growing season, rather than having a ton of stuff ready to harvest at once, then nothing after that.

3. Plant One New Edible Every Week

As Pleasant notes in the article, devoting one row to "this and that" crops -- crops that you sow just a little bit of to add variety to your garden -- can hugely increase the variety in your garden and help stave off boredom. You could also do this with containers. Plant a pot of something new, such as leaf amaranth or bok choy. You'll increase your knowledge, try a few new foods, and make better use of your space.

x-posted from Tree Hugger

Read more about Maximizing Your Harvest at Mother Earth News.


More About Vegetable Gardening:

• Lazivores Unite: A Manifesto for Lazy Gardening
• 7 Ways to Grow Potatoes
• No Green Thumb? Try Growing These 3 Easy Vegetables

#Mountainair Community Garden updates

Correction to last iCreate post: Tomas not Scott as incorrectly reported is writing the the Community Garden application for the Scotts (no doubt where the 'Scott' came from) Miracle-Gro Community Gardens and Open Spaces grant that I pointed them to (a hint to keep me posted). We have no idea how tight the competition will be, but the grant requirements look like a good fit.

And now back to the garden... 

Recently, Tomas Wolff (assistant garden manager and Joan Embree stand in but not dressing the part) and other Community Gardeners have been occupied with getting the new art center ready for use ~ but not before starting early seedlings in the Mojave Rose greenhouse to have a selection, including popular herbs and tomato varieties, ready to sell at the May 5 opening of the new Mountainair Farm & Garden Market.  

Reports have been scant but seedlings are coming along nicely and a good selection will be available for opening day. Some may also be available for purchase directly from the Community Garden on workdays. I'll keep you posted... if the gardeners do the same for me (and will remind them if they don't).

March Garden Update from Tomas (should be more, my next step will have to be writing exciting fictional updates to post):

March 12: The tomatoes are popping out all over. I also planted 25 bell peppers and have them over at my house where I can put them on a heating pad. There are some more cups available, but we are running out of planting soil. I'll try to get some this weekend, so we can plant more peppers and spices and seedlings for our own community garden, perhaps during this coming week. We probably have about 250+ seedlings planted so far.

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More information about the Scotts Miracle-Gro Grant ~

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company Offers Grants for Community Gardens and Green Spaces: World's Largest Lawn and Garden Company Launches Program Helping Communities to Cultivate a Green Thumb   

The goal: to plant 1,000 gardens and green spaces across the U.S., Canada and Europe by 2018. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company wants to make that happen and launched a new program called GRO1000, offering $1,500 grants to deserving communities and organizations in the hopes it will get people involved in creating more community gardens and green spaces where they call home. 

"Something happens when communities grow and learn together," said Jim King, ScottsMiracle-Gro's senior vice president of corporate affairs. "People develop a sense of pride and accomplishment when they get involved in cleaning up their neighborhoods, growing flowers, or cultivating their own healthy local food, and we want to help them get the job done." 

Communities interested in pursuing 2011 GRO1000 grassroots grants can apply online by March 31, 2011. Projects should include the involvement of neighborhood residents and foster a sense of community spirit.

This year's crop of ScottsMiracle-Gro's community gardens is already underway. On March 1, teachers, parents and students at Morning Star School in Tampa, FL, got their hands dirty planting edible and learning gardens on the school's campus. 

Throughout 2011, Scotts Miracle-Gro and its partners: Keep America Beautiful, Plant A Row for the Hungry, Garden Writers Association, the National Gardening Association and Franklin Park Conservatory will establish gardens and green spaces in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York, Ontario, Canada and Lyon, France. 

Carol Ledbetter

 Program Administrator, Plant A Row for the Hungry
5281 Holly Springs Dr.~ Douglasville, GA 30135
Tel/Fax: 877.GWAA.PAR, E-mail: par@gardenwriters.org
PAR is a public service campaign of the Garden Writers Association Foundation